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Titanfall developer Respawn has been badly hit by EA’s latest round of layoffs, with at least two new games being cancelled this year.
Giving up the name FIFA, because it was becoming too expensive to licence, was a big risk for EA, but it seemed to pay off when EA Sports FC 24 was just as big a hit as ever. But last year’s EA Sports FC 25 was not and after multiple reports of it selling below EA’s expectations the company has laid off over 300 employees across multiple studios.
The job losses that have ravaged the video games industry since the end of the pandemic haven’t been in the news as much lately, but they’ve never gone away. In fact, they’ve been sadly consistent, at over 1,500 layoffs every quarter, since last summer.
Over 30,000 developers have lost their jobs since 2021 and after cutting 670 jobs last year EA has made another massive dent in their staff numbers, with anything up to 400 redundancies across Respawn Entertainment and others.
The problem is that not only was EA Sports FC 25 a disappointment, but live service game Apex Legends has also seen a decline in business over recent months, with many of the layoffs centred around developer Respawn.
EA has not confirmed the exact numbers, but Bloomberg suggests that between 300 to 400 jobs have gone in total, with 100 layoffs at Respawn.
This has led to two Respawn games being cancelled, although it’s unclear if rumours of Titanfall 3 were ever true. One unknown title was canned earlier in the year but the other was an unannounced extraction shooter set in the Titanfall/Apex Legends universe and codenamed R7.
Respawn has confirmed that it has cancelled ‘two early-stage incubation projects’ and made ‘some targeted team adjustments across Apex Legends and Star Wars Jedi.’
The third and final Star Wars Jedi title has already had a rocky start, after series creator director Stig Asmussen left Respawn, and nothing has been shown of the new game yet.
‘As part of our continued focus on our long-term strategic priorities, we’ve made select changes within our organisation that more effectively aligns teams and allocates resources in service of driving future growth,’ is the purposefully non-descriptive comment from EA.
Fan discontent with EA Sports FC 25 has been obvious for months now but it’s unclear exactly how much it has missed EA’s internal targets. The obvious concern for EA is how this year’s EA Sports FC 26 will fare, especially as it is likely to be released around the same time as GTA 6.
Likewise, there’s no indication of exactly how much trouble Apex Legends is in, although Respawn has emphasised that work on it continues and that they are currently ‘expanding what Apex can be’, while ‘investing in what’s next for the franchise.’
The only underperformance with any context is last autumn’s Dragon Age: The Veilguard, which sold half of what EA was expecting – although it was never going to be as big a moneymaker as EA’s core franchises.
Since Star Wars Jedi 3 is likely to be several years away, EA is currently focusing a lot of effort on Battlefield 6, which is due to be released before March next year (a decision that may be dependent on when GTA 6 arrives).
However, given Battlefield’s uneven sales performance over the years, that’s not a very safe pair of hands. For a long time now, FIFA has been the backbone of EA’s business but if that begins to waver then EA, and the games industry at large, could be in for even more turmoil.
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